


Dysfunctional

by Pam_beasley



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-01-11 03:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18422304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pam_beasley/pseuds/Pam_beasley
Summary: A look into the life of a dysfunctional family and their many problems.---A series of one shots with no real significance, meaning, or purpose.





	1. Chapter 1

Ben didn’t scream.

For a boy who only ever complained for a second before indulging the requests asked of him, it almost made sense that he didn’t scream. Just as complacently as he had obeyed what was expected he had followed death.

But he should have screamed, thought Klaus who watched the scene in horror. The tentacles that painfully emerged from Ben’s stomach, tearing apart his flesh, was cause enough to scream. The way he had been overpowered, veins and tendons being ripped in half, that should have caused him to scream.

But he didn’t. He barely cried out.

The screams would come. Late at night when Klaus was left to his own devices, when the scene replayed in his head, the screams would come. Both his and Ben’s. They’d become a second companion that joined the screams of the dead. 

They’d come. They always did. But for now, the only screams came from the other Hargreeves children that had never known death. 

Diego was the first to scream, always feeling his emotions too loudly, too passionately. His cries came in the form of raw anger. Pure, unfiltered rage.

He threw his knives with no reserve, attempting to fight against this tragedy.

‘It’s too late,’ thought Klaus cynically. ‘Why do now what you should have done sooner?’ He shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t have let him use his powers. He hated it. He’s always hated it. And now he’s dead.’

Klaus laughed. 

He couldn’t help himself. He didn’t know how to process these emotions. Like Ben, he wouldn’t be able to scream until later, but for now, he’d laugh and shake and wet himself and hope by some miracle that he’d find Ben safely back home.

Luther was the next to scream. His pain came out in the form of a command.

“Number Four!” he yelled at Klaus. His voice was stern but to the trained ear it was incredibly broken and lost. “Stop Three!”

Klaus could barely react as his sister, Allison ran past him, tears falling freely from under her mask.

“I heard a rumor!” she screamed through strangled sobs, trying to make her way to Ben’s body.

Klaus moved on autopilot. Allison’s powers were strong. Dangerous. Maybe she could bring Ben back. Maybe she couldn’t. An innate part of Klaus knew she shouldn’t be allowed to try. 

He dwelt with the dead. They were monsters. Bringing them back was a responsibility the Hargreeves children would not be able to survive.

He tackled Allison, the pain of hitting the ground barely registering. He thrust his hands over her mouth, and she violently hit him.

“You came back!” she tried when she squirmed out of his grip. “You’re okay! I heard a rumor--”

Klaus pressed his hands into her mouth, disrupting her powers before they could form fully. She hit his chest and cried.

“You can’t.” He laughed again, crazed. “He’s gone.” A frightening grin spread across his features, one that had seen reality and didn’t like what reality had to show. “Ben is gone.”

“Bring him back, you sick bastard!” Diego threw a punch, throwing Klaus off Allison.

Luther rushed to restrain her, and Diego was left to do as he pleased.

Hot tears filled his dark eyes, and his screams the air. “Bring back our brother!”

A pathetic giggle accompanied Klaus’s voice. “I can’t.”

“Then talk to him!” Diego grabbed his collar, jerking him forwards. “Talk to him and figure out a way to bring him back.”

Klaus shook his head, knowing he couldn’t even try.

Diego punched him. The pain gave Klaus something to tie onto, something to save him from losing his mind completely. 

“You’re useless!” Diego hit him again.

Klaus stumbled to the ground. 

Diego screamed and Allison’s wails quickly joined him. Even Luther barked commands, unorganized and disheveled. 

Ben hadn’t screamed, but he hadn’t needed to. His siblings were willing to feel his pain for him and share it with the world.


	2. Chapter 2

The sound of Ben’s death filled Klaus’s vision.

That last gasp of air brushing past Ben’s lips was deafening.

A pain emerged from Klaus’s stomach. Something was begging to get out. His skin split as four tentacled erupted from his chest. His lungs were pushed to the side, and he found he couldn’t breathe. Tears filled his eyes. A scream attempted to slip into the world, but he didn’t have the air needed to give it a voice.

Ben, a generous brother, screamed for him. He let his hoarse voice fill the air. His cry turned into a congested gasp that swam in blood, drowned in it. Then there was a sputtering. A hacked cough. Then silence.

In a way, this scream was worse than any Klaus had ever heard before. He had listened to anger. He had felt rage, unfiltered and deafening. He had known terror. Every waking breath was a playlist of cries that shuffled through horror quickly and sporadically. 

But Ben’s screams--this reflection of his death--was a symphony that carried a pain far worse than Klaus had ever felt. 

It was fear manifested. 

It was a slight struggle and a quick resignation. 

The head cold that never meant to inconvenience anyone but still struck with an unexpected force.

That was Ben’s scream. The final noise he had made before his death.

It was his solitary struggle. 

It was his surrender. 

Klaus jolted awake, his heart pounding. Sweat came from every pore in his body and drenched his thoughts. His hands instinctively went to his chest, searching for any tangible wounds. 

Then, in the darkness, he saw his brother sitting in the corner of his room. Across from Klaus’s bed, hugging his knees, there was the dead Hargreeves child with tears falling from his dark eyes in steady drops, looking very much alive.

Klaus froze, staring at Ben from his position on the bed. He held his breath, saying nothing.

“I….” Ben tried, searching for his voice in the chasm of death. Unknowingly, Klaus lent his powers, assisting in Ben’s search. 

“I shouldn’t be here,” Ben tried again. He bit his lip and struggled to keep Klaus’s gaze.

“No. No.” Klaus shook his head, surprised by the softness of his voice. “No. Oh gosh no. Don’t say that. This is your home.”

The situation pulled Klaus to his childhood. Between Ben and himself, the two had had enough nightmares to keep a movie theater running for a year. Many nights were spent together. In the same bed. In silence. In hushed whispers. In cautious, grounding touches. Was this any different? 

Klaus had always been the first to seek Ben. His brother, hesitant and scared to ask for what he thought he didn’t deserve, only ever approached Klaus when he had exerted all his tears and nearly induced a panic attack. 

Klaus’s heart dropped. “Did….” He choked back a sob. “Did I bring you hear?”

Ben’s hands covered his face, and his body shook. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He shook his head violently back and forth, pressing his hands into his skin. “I shouldn’t have died. I’m sorry.”

Klaus’s eyes stung. His head ached, demanding something but not knowing what it needed. He watched as his brother cried and apologized for actions that he couldn’t be blamed for. He winced, trying to will Ben back to the afterlife--whatever that might be. 

Souls weren’t happy on earth, his powers had told him again and again. The pain of their death was the only weight they carried. Their souls twisted and turned, knowing they no longer had a place on the material plane. Their bodies felt disjointed, like they shouldn't belong. The turmoil was so excruciating that only the restless souls--the ones with debts to pay--stayed behind. Only the ones who had already been hurt beyond repair allowed him to call them. The others couldn't endure it.   
But here was his brother, young and innocent, suffering this unimaginable pain. Apologizing although it was Klaus’s call he had answered, although this torment had been thrown on him by the very brother he was apologizing to. 

No matter how Klaus tried, he couldn’t send Ben back. Some part of himself--a large part--grabbed onto Ben and refused to let go. It knit a bond between living and dead, and Klaus couldn’t bring himself to cut it. 

Klaus was the one who had done this.

But Ben was the one apologizing.

For over an hour, Ben cried hysterically while Klaus watched helplessly, his heart shattered in several hundred pieces. 

There was so much Klaus should’ve said. ‘I need you’ was one. ‘I’m terrified’ was another. ‘I love you’ was perhaps the most important. ‘Help me’ the most necessary.

Saying none of these, he only watched silently as Ben cried and apologized. 

Until the sun rose and even after that, he watched Ben repent for the pain he himself had caused, for the weaknesses he possessed. He watched Ben apologize for his vices, paying penance for suffering he had not created.

Living and dead. Two scared brothers sharing in their pain and confusion. It was deafening.


	3. Chapter 3

Diego flung the door open with violent force. “Don’t!” he shouted as the enemies scrambled for escape. “Don’t m-m-,” he tried. His mouth contorted, but the words wouldn’t fall past his lips. He stood there, unable to move, as he fought with his tongue to produce the soundwaves he needed.

His face turned red. His lungs whined for air. His mouth gasped but continually refused to move in the way he wanted it to.

“Don’t move!” Luther shouted for him with a booming voice, pushing him out of the way. His voice was surefire and commanding. It was everything Diego thought his would be.

But his own voice was never that. No, that’d be too simple.

While Diego knew what he wanted to say and how he’d say it, his mouth and vocal cords never seemed to obey. The air would get caught in his chest. The letters would build up at the back of his throat, and pushing them through his lips was nearly impossible.

When the enemies had been apprehended, Luther approached to scold him for his failure to follow procedure. Diego said nothing in retaliation, half out of fear that he would be physically unable to say anything.

As they returned home, his brother, Ben nudged him slightly, offering a sincere smile. “Good job back there. You led us right to the bad guys.”

Diego scowled. Anger swelled in his chest, finding a home beneath his skin. “I don’t need y-y-your pity.”

Ben’s smile dropped. “It’s alright if you have a stutter, really.”

“W-who said I have-have one?” he spat out with some

“Ben fatto!” Klaus cooed in fluid Italian while approaching his brothers. He threw his arms around them and pulled them in close. “Well done my brothers.”

Diego pushed him away. Klaus was annoying. Absolutely intolerable. He spoke rapidly and smoothly, and he could change his voice in any way he wanted, borrowing tones that weren’t even his own. Other languages swam past his lips in accents Diego could never hope to replicate. Just as easily, he’d begin to sing or hum as if his voice was merely a play thing waiting to be manipulated.

Diego simply hated it.

“W-w-w-” he tried, always struggling with the rapid movement and amount of air that a ‘w’ required. “Would you sh---ut up?” He scowled at his two brothers, not trying to hide   
his annoyance. Even if he couldn’t communicate with words, his expressions would never fail him.

Klaus raised his arms as if he had been caught by the police in the midst of a grand crime. “Am I expected to exercise my right to remain silent, officer?”  
Ben tried to shush him, but Diego was already scoffing and storming to his room.

He turned one of his knives over and over as he thought of how simply stupid he must be and how he hated this feeling of not being in control.

Everyone could talk. Words were their tools to use as they pleased. But he wasn’t smart enough to use such tools. Rather, they were weights that fought against his tongue and lips, refusing to let him say the things he needed to say. Others built music with every sound that left their lips, but he could only produce a shaky dirge.

Twenty-six letters.

Twenty-six letters and he could only say about half of them with ease. Words had to be neglected, simpler ones chosen. Things had to be planned in advance, and even then he couldn’t keep up with his thought and had to reject sentences entirely. People finished his sentences, stealing the very words from his lips, turning his thoughts into their own, and they did all of this while watching him with disappointed disdain.

It was simply frustrating.

Maybe Allison could help him, he thought briefly. Her powers manipulated people. Whatever it was. Whatever made him look so stupid. She could get rid of it.

Twenty-six letters that he detested from the bottom of his heart, and the only thing he could try to do was ask his sister to change the very structure of who he was.

That’s all they were: letters. But to everyone else, they were so important, and the fact he couldn’t use them all made them view him as less.

Tears were beginning to fill his eyes when there was a gently knock on his door. Grace, his mother, entered while offering a smile.

“I heard what happened,” she began.

“W-w-who…..”

He allowed his sentence to exist in incompleteness, too tired to attempt to give it a body. 

“Allison. She wants to know if you’re okay.”

Diego stared at his reflection in his knife.

Grace took a step forward, her perfect skin wrinkling slightly. “Are you, sweetheart?”

“I looked like a fool!” He threw his knife, and it hit the wall with a satisfying thunk.

“I’m sure it wasn’t all that bad.” Grace sat beside him, resting a comforting hand on his knee.

After a moment of silence, she said, “Everyone struggles with speaking. It takes practice and work, and it’s okay to not be perfect at it.”  
Diego shook his head vigorously. “It’s na-natural. If you can’t do-d-d---doit you’re stu-stu-stupid.”

“I struggled with speaking.”

Diego rolled his eyes. “No, you did-didn’t.”

“It took nearly a year for me to get it right. Words are so complicated, aren’t they?” She tweaked his nose playfully. “They’re such fickle things. I still have to practice every now   
and then to make sure I can get them right. Pogo and I both do. Larger words are especially tedious.”

Diego stared, trying to analyze the veracity of her words. “No joke?”

“Do you think that’s funny?”

He shook his head.

She smiled tenderly. “No joke, then. You know, sometimes your mouth doesn’t move the way you need it to or your lungs won’t cooperate, but that doesn’t make you stupid, does it? That doesn’t affect the content up here.” She tapped his forehead. 

He looked at his mother, amazed that someone was capable of being so sure of him, so willing to love him despite his shortcomings. She didn’t offer false pity or try to ignore his stutter. Somehow, it was as if she was willing to embrace it. And, in some amazing way, she managed to believe in him despite all. His unspoken intelligence, she saw it and she relished it in a way no one else had.

“You’re a brilliant boy, Diego. If you’d like, you and I can have lessons to help with those pesky words. But if you’d rather not, we can let those pesky words be. Brilliance isn’t diminished either way.”

She kissed the top of his head, showing him that she would continue to see his brilliance until her last breath and, stutter or not, she would always love him.


	4. Chapter 4

You’re scratching again,” Ben said when there was a pause in Klaus’s info dump. 

Klaus looked down. His fingers on his left hand rested on top of the back of his right. His skin was red and three streaks of blood stained his skin and nails. 

Ben only pointed out this nasty habit when Klaus scratched hard enough to draw blood. He knew in some innate way that his brother was embarrassed by this habit and he did not want to bring such embarrassment to him. But when Klaus brought harm to himself, Ben found it hard to remain silent. He had watched Klaus regress into a dangerous drug addiction and he had said nothing to stop it because he felt as if it wasn’t his place to do so. Now, he decided his time of being a spectator in his brother’s fight was over. He would protect Klaus in whatever way he could. His own death, he believed, was an experience less painful than the struggle Klaus went through every day. His biggest regret was belittling this struggle and trying to allow him to traverse the pains of life on his own.

Klaus brushed the blood away and sent Ben a crooked grin. “So I have.”

Ben smiled back although the emotions behind it were not genuine. Klaus hid behind his humor, and it had become like second-nature for Ben to allow him to hide. He’d roll his eyes or he’d smile back or even laugh if the situation called for it. But perhaps the era of humor was coming to its end. Perhaps it was necessary the brothers recognize the reality of the situation they were in and they speak about it, truthfully and vulnerably. 

Klaus fiddled with the dog tags around his neck. He had to keep his hands occupied. He had to keep his mind off the horrible itching in his skin. Bugs of addiction crawled beneath his flesh, begging to be let out or fed, and all he could do was cling to the dog tags in hope that he was able to outlast the lifespan of these vile creatures that dwelled in his bloodstream. 

“So, as I was saying,” he continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. He shook slightly, and when he blinked, his eyes closed for a moment too long and shut a tad too tight--a wince he couldn’t control. His mind retraced his words. His lips stumbled over phrases he could often say with ease. A disjointedness lived within him, but he ignored it. This struggle, this fight which occurred within his very being, within his very sense of self, went unspoken as if it was not taking place. The fear that he might lose, that he might not be strong enough to overcome his vices, was present and real, but that too was ignored. 

Instead, he talked as if Ben pointing out the fact he had scratched his hand hard enough to draw blood was the same as his brother pointing out that he had left his fly unzipped.

“I think we should--”

“I’m proud of you,” Ben interrupted. He wasn’t smiling. He couldn’t bring himself to smile. But his emotions, his care and love for his brother, were evident in his eyes.

Klaus’s face fell in worry and surprise, then he grinned, his eyes lighting with genuine joy, then he covered this raw emotion with the humor he hid behind so well. He rolled his eyes and shook his head. In a mock condescending falsetto, he said, “I can’t have my wittle itty brother getting sappy on me.” He reached to pinch Ben’s cheek and for a split second, he made contact before his hand passed through the space that Ben didn’t have the form to occupy. 

Ben moved so Klaus’s hand no longer passed through him. He didn’t want that to remind Klaus that no matter how hard he had worked, it had not been enough to create a substantial difference in the strength of his powers. 

“I mean it,” he tried again, pushing all hints of mock humor aside. “I really am proud of you.”

“I’m a mess.” His words were half joking half confession.

“You’ve always been a mess. But now you’re trying.”

Klaus ran his hands through his hair. He stared at the ground, refusing to meet Ben and show him the tears which had been gathering in his eyes. “Sometimes trying isn’t good enough.”

“I didn’t ask if it was good enough. I said I’m proud of you.”

Klaus smiled then, a genuine smile that was small and bashful but lit up his eyes nonetheless. “I think I’m proud of me, too.”

Ben couldn’t help but grin. “Good.”

Klaus instinctively reached out for a high-five, and Ben hurried to match his movement. Their skin touched and for the first time since his death, Ben felt the resemblance of warmth. Not even a second later, Klaus’s hand passed through Ben’s, but they had managed to touch long enough and hard enough to produce a sound. 

Klaus laughed and Ben giggled, the two sharing in a moment of pure joy. 

Klaus’s battle was going to be long and arduous, but they were making progress. And they had every right to be proud of him.


End file.
